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Published: November 4th 2013
“Poverty and misery aren’t encouragements to an orderly life.” Inspector Wexford in a Ruth Rendell mystery novel.
“Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.” Woody Allen
“The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old but that one is young.” Oscar Wilde
I was sick recently. Friday lunch I ate spinach (umrhoho) that had been cooked at the school the previous day, with no refrigeration overnight. My better sense should have stopped me, but I love spinach and it’s a break from the regular lunch fare of pap or samp and beans. I was in my shopping town that afternoon thinking my dizziness was due to dehydration. (I have low blood pressure and have to be sure to drink water and eat salty snacks to retain water.) I warned the ladies at the Shop-Rite checkout counter that I was sick, and was trying to cool off by taking off my hat and outer shirt when I fainted. Someone helped me over to some chairs by the wall and I sprawled out over my backpack with a cold drink (SA for soda) until I felt better. After an hour, I was able to walk to the taxi rank, take the 30 minute taxi ride and walk 20 minutes home. (My host family scolded me for not calling so that someone could have walked out to meet me where the taxi dropped me off. I know that I should have done that, but I’m too independent sometimes.)
The people at the store had been helpful, too. But I realized something then... I must have looked very pale when I was warning them I was feeling sick., but I don’t think they noticed my pallor. I was talking to some teachers the other day about this...how I don’t readily distinguish between degrees of black skin colouring and they can’t see the whiter shade of pale I was when I was sick.) A tangent from that is, I received a birthday card from a friend depicting 3 old ladies, with three hair colors. My friend had written my name under the brown-haired lady, but my learners thought I had to be the blonde. That is because my hair is mostly silver now..but it seems obvious to me that my hair is turning gray from the dark brown that I still see in the mirror anyway. Is my perception different because I am clinging to my youth? Or do the learners just see the light shade of my hair and see it as blonde? They also professed to be surprised that it was my 60
th birthday. Someone even said he thought I was 47. HA! I know not to believe a word my learners say anyway.
So, it took a good 4 days after that Friday to feel better and in that time I read a lot of mystery novels. (Have I mentioned how I love my Kindle?) The quotes above speak to some thoughts on poverty I’ve had lately, and, then, of course, to turning 60! So the blog title is not so much about MY recent trials and tribulations, but about what my experiences have set me to thinking on with regard to poverty. And though PCVs’ living allowance is low enough that we have to watch our expenses carefully; we pick and choose what food we really want (that is if we can find it), keep track of airtime and data on our phones, etc; we are not at all in the same position as those around us. If I really need something and it’s over my budget, I break into my American money. And most importantly, if anything were to happen to me health-wise, Peace Corps takes care of me.
What has happened lately?
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">Water has returned after 5 months without it,<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">I dropped my phone in my pee bucket<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">I have finished a tiring month of evening classes with the Gr 12’s who are now writing national exams so that they may matric (matriculate).
The water came back sporadically for one week and now it has been back one whole week. I refill religiously, so that I will not be found with a low water supply if it gets cut off again. The story I hear this time is that with elections coming, the ANC wants to show the people that it is working to make their lives better. (The ANC is the party of Nelson Mandela and other heroes in the fight for democracy, and present politicians are not cut out of the same cloth...with talk of bribes, corruption, etc.)
I retrieved my phone fairly quickly (it was not submerged, just one end dipped in) and put it in rice, dried it with a blow drier belonging to my host family...but the screen was not working...though the phone was making and receiving calls. After five days, I bought a new one. I was not a good customer, i.e., I was not being “nice,” I don’t understand the way these phones are set up, and technology is irritating to me, anyway. But after an afternoon of hanging out in the store until they got it running...maybe it was language problems, or they just assumed I understood phone technology because I was from the US...I even admitted my age was a problem, I told them that my daughters were way better than me at this stuff...I am going home in the taxi, wishing there was a way to get my contact list off my old phone to my new one. Then half of the screen on the broken phone lights up. And in three hours the old phone is working just fine. I understand there is no way I’ll be allowed to return the new phone; and I never want to go in that store again. I sold the new phone to Zanele, in my host family. She got a great deal. I guess I could have sold it for more to anyone at the school, but it’s fine. I am glad to have helped Zanele out. You can’t read the keys on her old phone it is so worn out. I think that’s what my phone may look like by Nov 2014 when I leave here...I just hope I can keep it working until then.
Concerned teachers met with parents of Gr 12’s to beg them to TAKE AWAY THE CELL PHONES and to set up extra study sessions at the school for them to prepare for national exams in November. Instead of after school sessions, I met at 7:30 pm, Mon-Thurs with either Maths or Maths Lit. After 3 weeks, I was exhausted, and so were the other two teachers. One night I lost my cool with a class who were just fooling around. The other teacher said “He had never seen me like that before.” No, I didn’t resort to corporal punishment...but I stormed out of the room, and yelled at a boy and girl who were draped around each other TOO MUCH. The school ran out of money (for the 3
rd time this year) and sent learners out one afternoon to collect firewood, for cooking lunch in big pots under the tree in the school yard. I have a collection of broken chair parts in my room. A learner picked up a chair to move it, and the plastic back broke right off in her hand. I had seen the leg of this same kind of cheap plastic chair soften and bend under the man sitting in it, because the sun had been shining through the window on it all afternoon. Somewhat similar to teachers’ lives everywhere, you are tired just from keeping on, and at the same time dealing with absurd “stuff”.
With night classes, I was arriving back home at 10 pm and wanted to lock up the yard gate myself so that my host family wouldn’t have to come out late at night to do it. I have never needed my own key before; and my family had to find another lock which had two keys so that we each had our own. The new lock was even bigger than the first; bigger than any lock the Forest Service used on the gates on the logging roads near our cabin. It says something that my host family could find another lock and key in their house, when they are often asking to borrow a pen, tape, matches, etc. from me. Never an extra pen around the house, but always an extra padlock.
This time of year has hot sunny days accompanied by stormy nights with power outages, heavy rain, some hail, strong winds, thunder and lightning. Quite exciting most of the time, keeps the temps down, and it’s refreshing to see so much green. One night the wind came up so violently that it rattled my tin roof and rubble sprinkled down off the walls. Everything had a coat of grit on it and I had to brush off my pillow and comforter before I went to sleep. Another storm brought a plague of insects to my room. Serious! They were long-winged insects and something smaller, I think they were two stages of life of the same insect. They mostly swarmed around the two light bulbs, but were buzzing everywhere. It’s as if they somehow got lost in the storm, flew in my window and went wild. I had to think quickly..First protect the chocolate cake I’d just frosted from bugs flying into the frosting..then move the dishwashing basin off the counter, where the bugs were the worst, to my bed, so I could wash the dishes before the water filled up with dead bugs...then continue heating up water to fill my bathing bucket, so I could wash out the bugs that were flying into my hair and getting trapped there. In less than an hour the bugs were gone, and I was taking a relaxing bucket bath in the light of my oil lamp because the power was out. All the surfaces in the house were peppered with dead bugs, and the long lacy wings floated into every nook and cranny in the place, so I’m still finding them days later.
How can I create order out of such a life? How can I be prepared for weather that disrupts the comfort of the simple structure I call my home? People describe it as a lack of control over things...and say that is why people in South Africa are continually sweeping the dirt in their yards and even in the streets. Sweeping is one thing you can do to control things. I don’t know about that...only that the methods that served me so well in my life BSA (Before South Africa) are dropping by the wayside. And I don’t know if there’s any point to analyse it, just tell the stories and wait for the next thing to happen.
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Cynthia Hosick
non-member comment
Trials and Tribulations
Oh Carolyn. I have seen the conditions you describe, but I don\'t have to live in them in Kenya, because of the western ideals and "wealth" of my friends. Once I talked to Shompole about the feeling I was having about the contrast between my privileges and "their" poverty. He said he understood, but they don't know anything else, it's how they have always lived. That from a fellow Kenyan. To his huge credit, he is constantly looking for and providing ways for people in the community to live better lives, and to give people jobs if he can make then. I'm going again mid-December and will be there maybe 6 weeks this time. Last May we shipped over the something-like-two-tons of used children\'s books and school supplies I'd collected over the past couple of years, and we sent off four more last month. So this will be a working vacation, as I (with help I sincerely hope) unpack all those big boxes and get books and supplies organized on the new shelves in the new library room in their little school. We have 10 students now, in the pre-school and kindergarten age group. I'm sure the presence of the books, which are so rare over there, will bring in more students. They expect it to be a slow process, so all is actually well. They do hope the school will be self-supporting at some point with school fees, and that there will be enough for some scholarships. I'm not as "over the moon" as I was last time -- no first time excitement. But am excited to get the books in place; will be very glad to see Lorna's father and one particular sister, and Shompole's father and mother; and I am looking forward to attending the wedding of Shompole's next to youngest brother (the last to be married), whose engagement ceremonies I went to last time I was there. I am also looking forward to getting out of this environment, as I still don't have a focus since Howard died, and no particular reason to get up in the morning, even though it's been more than a year and a half since he died. It would be a whole lot better for me to have someone else in the house, or to live closer to my kids, but I'm not ready to made such big changes. So I just get along from day to day, and find things outside my immediate self that are worthwhile to do. Helen Bobisud and I did go to Albuquerque in October for the internation balloon festival, and went up in a balloon while we were there, which was very fun! Anyway, you have my empathy, my respect, and my permission to "lose it" occasionally. ;) As I did on a much lesser scale, you will have big time culture shock when you come back to the states, along with a feeling of not belonging anywhere. I guarantee that will wear off, but it takes awhile. Hang in there! Cynthia